Five Finger Death Punch’s Zoltan Bathory: Judo Master Who Hates iPhones?
Five Finger Death Punch's first album, 'Way of the Fist,' came out two years ago. Much of those last two years have been spent on the road, playing the same songs night after monotonous night. But this fall, when Five Finger Death Punch head out on a headlining run with a bill that's still being assembled, they'll finally have some new songs to play live, and Zoltan Bathory couldn't be more relieved.
"Finally, finally, finally the second record is coming out," the guitarist tells Noisecreep, before the September 22 release of 'War Is the Answer.' "We've been anxious to put something else out, because we've played that record, I don't know, 500 times. So it was about time we did something new."
Having just one album under their collective belts made headlining almost impossible, so the band was forced to add covers to their set. The band's all-time favorite, and one they'll likely whip out again this fall? Faith No More's "From Out of Nowhere." But Bathory will also be whipping out something else every stop along the tour, and its not what you think.
"I travel with my judo mats," he explains. "They're fold-out marshal arts mats, and I try to train as much as I can. When we were on Mayhem last year, Herman Li from DragonForce, he's into jujitsu, and he travels with mats. So, every morning, we'd head over to this huge orange tent. We called it the Jägermeister Dojo. It was air-conditioned and we both had our mats, and assembled a dojo in there, so we could train every morning. I always travel with my mats."
Bathory also doesn't go anywhere without his phone. But he doesn't bow at the throne of Jobs, folks. He's got a Samsung touch screen phone, in fact, after ditching his BlackBerry.
"I hated that phone...it made my thumb hurt," he says. "I had the old school one with the track ball. I even had the one with the buttons on the side...the big blue-looking one that were the size of a plate? I have an Instinct now. I couldn't get an iPhone. I just can't bring myself to do it. They're cool, but f---ing everybody has one."
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